There's a moment in the life of every well-made thing when it can no longer be repaired. Not because it failed but because it gave everything it had.

That moment is where Beyond Repair begins.

This is the story of how a shared obsession with longevity and circularity brought Eva and Birkenstock Australia together for Melbourne Design Week 2026.

What is it?

Beyond Repair is a material research exhibition born from a single argument: that what emerges from repair can become the raw material of new design.

Eva and Birkenstock Australia have been working to understand what a worn cork footbed, one that is beyond repair, can become. Working with UnitedMake and Textiles Australia, we ground these footbeds into cork granules and tested a range of binding approaches.

Resin-bound cork granules — ground from Birkenstock footbeds, reformed into something new.

Each experiment within this exhibition was a step toward the final solution: a resin-bound cork with structural integrity, a stable finish, and an unexpected visual quality that opens up new possibilities across furniture and spatial design.

This is an invitation to understand how design thinking can operate at the end of a lifecycle, not just the beginning.